Valley of the Sun: Beyond Desert Survival

Grady Gammage Jr. Senior Research Fellow

April 2013

 

   

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Sustaining Phoenix Valley of the Sun: Beyond Desert Survival

April 2013

Grady Gammage, Jr. Senior Research Fellow

Contributors:

Sapna Gupta, Senior Policy Analyst

Susan Clark-Johnson, Executive Director

Dr. David Daugherty, Director of Research

Joshua Connolly, Manager of Data Analysis

Joseph Garcia, Director of Communication

Morrison Institute for Public Policy

Arizona State University

________________________________________________

When discussing sustainability, is it fair to repeatedly single out Phoenix as a model

of vulnerability? How does the Arizona desert city compare to other U.S. cities? Should

businesses and people continue to flock to the Valley of the Sun? Or, is Phoenix really an at-

risk city with a questionable future due to climate, water supply and politics?

The future of the world’s cities has come under question of late for a whole variety of

reasons, ranging from hurricanes to rising oceans to changing economic tides. Superstorm

Sandy may be the latest, most dramatic example of the potential impact of climate change

on coastal cities built at sea level. There is debate about whether to allow rebuilding

portions of the New Jersey and New York coastlines and how to do it more effectively.

There also was considerable debate after Hurricane Katrina about the wisdom of

rebuilding New Orleans in such a vulnerable location. Meanwhile, the decline of 20th-century

 

   

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manufacturing threatens a slew of Midwestern industrial cities, such as Detroit, where a

swath of the urban fabric is now so under-populated that it must be dramatically rebuilt.

Internationally, some European cities today essentially are monuments to their own past.

Venice is sinking, as islands off the coast threaten to disappear. Rapidly arising Asian cities

are choked with pollution. Huge megapolitan areas appear nearly ungovernable.

The sustainability of the world’s urban places seems in doubt, even as the world’s

population becomes increasingly urban. Amidst all this, some cities are dismissed out of

hand as unsustainable and eventually unlivable. Phoenix, the nation’s sixth-largest city,

often finds itself under suspicion. The city’s size and its rapid population growth during the

past five decades shock some commentators. The recent recession, with its headline-

making statistics about deflating property values and record foreclosures, coupled with

controversial immigration legislation, further thrust the Phoenix region into the national

spotlight.

But Phoenix’s economy is steadily emerging from the recession, and the state’s anti-

immigrant legislation is being sorted out by the courts as Congress deals with national

immigration reform. Still, the glare of national attention on Phoenix remains. There seems to

be a deeper strain in national commentators’ shifting impression of Phoenix — a place few

understand politically, ideologically and, indeed, geographically; that this place in the desert

is a kind of demographic misstep, an accidental metropolis that makes no sense. Phoenix is,

after all, a city named after a bird that periodically immolates itself in search of rebirth. The

name itself implies impermanence and fragility of an unstable thing always in transition.

The Hohokam once lived in the Salt River Valley but were unable to sustain their

civilization in the harsh desert climate and left. Phoenix was built atop their ruins. Surely,

critics surmise, this must not be a place destined to last.

In this era of global anxiety about rapid population growth, the potential scarcity of

natural resources and the effects of climate change, Phoenix is being offered up by some

critics as a prime example of an unsustainable city.1 William deBuys, author of A Great

Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest, wrote the latest

screed about why Phoenix is doomed, in a March 2013 op-ed article in The Los Angeles

Times that was posted and reposted across the blogosphere. The best-known previous blast

was Andrew Ross’ 2011 book Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World’s Least Sustainable City.

 

   

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Phoenix’s newcomer status in the large city ranks, its improbable desert location, its

sizzling temperatures, and its dependence on water imported from the Colorado River all

contribute to this image of Phoenix as the obvious target.

LOOKING AT THE NUMBERS Metropolitan Phoenix sits in a fragile, dry and almost impossibly hot location. In the

summer of 2012, 20 days exceeded 110°F. 2 The year before, there were 30 days –

collectively, about a month – over 110°F. In 2009, the summer rains delivered only 0.87

inches of rain, 31 percent of “normal” levels. 3 The next year was somewhat wetter, but

2011 again had low summer precipitation (1.6 inches).4 But in 2012, 3.0 inches of rain fell.

A phenomenon known as the “heat-island effect” means the desert no longer cools

off at night during the summer as it once did, as deBuys duly noted. In the last 50 years the

average nighttime low temperature in Phoenix in the summer has increased by more than

10 degrees Fahrenheit — the result of the buildings, pavement, concrete, and asphalt

absorbing heat during the day and radiating it all night. But over the last decade Arizona

State University has been researching the heat island and developing ways to mitigate its

effects through innovation, landscape, building materials, and energy efficiency. We have

not fully solved the problem but all the evidence leads to confident conclusion that the heat-

island effect is a plateau that levels off in the range of today’s current temperatures, and

therefore is a problem we can manage.

Long-term trends from climate change predict that the temperature may continue to

rise, and rainfall likely will continue to diminish. Such forecasts have not deterred growth. In

fact, for most of the past five decades metropolitan Phoenix has continued to be one of the

fastest-growing cities in the United States, adding as many as 100,000 new residents a

year. These newcomers were drawn by sunshine, cheap housing, and an economy creating

lots of jobs. Recently, however, those trends have changed with the Phoenix metro area

suffering precipitous job declines in 2008 and 2009. There are signs that growth is

returning, with metro Phoenix ranking seventh in the nation for 2011 job growth,5 which is

the most recent figure available.

What does this mean for Phoenix’s future? Measuring the “sustainability” of any city

is complex, difficult and fraught with judgment. There is no consensus matrix or widely

accepted scorecard, but the typical analysis boils down to questioning whether a city is likely

 

   

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to thrive over the long term. By that measure, the principal indictments leveled against

Phoenix and its geography are that its lack of rainfall, its auto-centric sprawling geography

and dependence on air-conditioning make it more “at risk” compared to most other cities.

This report examines how the Phoenix metropolitan region compares against the

nation’s largest metropolitan regions on specific indicators of environmental factors. This is

not an examination of Arizona’s often-colorful politics, which also garner much attention and

speculation among national critics and the media. But on closer look, there is no denying the

link between challenging geography and the role of government in Phoenix. There is no

question about that, with other queries taking center stage.

Is Phoenix in a position to manage its potential sustainability challenges? Are its

opportunities to do so better or worse than other places? Is the evidence so overwhelming

that the only logical conclusion is Phoenix is in trouble? Indeed, such questions are often

asked in the form of thinly veiled accusations, as if Phoenix itself were on trial.

THE INDICTMENTS AGAINST PHOENIX

Count I: There’s No Water

In a 2006 radio interview on National Public Radio, author Simon Winchester was

discussing his book about the San Francisco earthquake, A Crack at the Edge of the World.

At the end of his talk he proposed that there were at least three American cities that “should

never have been built” – San Francisco because of earthquake faults; New Orleans, in the

wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina and the potential for future

hurricanes; and Phoenix because “there’s no water there.”6

Winchester’s litany against American cities lumped together the phenomenon of

catastrophic events with the availability of a particular resource to support an urban

population. This makes little sense. Cities are by definition concentrations of people

supported by the resource base of a larger geographic area. Most cities suffer some

measure of resource scarcity. Water is a resource like any other: It’s susceptible to

transport. Why take water and hold it to a standard not applied to any other resource

necessary to support a city?

Nevertheless, when one national group in 2008 ranked the sustainability of

American cities for water supply,7 it used as its primary measure how far water is

 

   

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transported. Not surprisingly, Phoenix ranked 49 out of 50. Indeed, water is transported long

distances to support Phoenix. On the other hand, until recent years, Tucson existed primarily

on mined groundwater, so it was rated by this same source as “more sustainable.” Yet

Arizona’s water policy for more than 30 years has been to try to wean cities from using the

non-renewable resource of groundwater and instead to build on renewable surface water

supplies. Moving surface water to urban use is an official early policy example of shifting to

more “sustainable” practices. This distinction is embedded in Arizona’s Groundwater

Management Act and a host of other policy decisions.

Every system that supports Phoenix was built in recognition of its geographical

challenges. Balmier places have taken for granted that their hospitable climate will continue

into the future, so a place like Atlanta is greatly challenged when rainfall decreases by 15 or

20 percent. Phoenix, on the other hand, depends virtually not at all on rainfall occurring

within its geographic proximity. Phoenix’s water comes in large measure from the mountains

of central Arizona (delivered through the Salt River Project) and from the Rockies

(transported through the Colorado River and the Central Arizona Project). Together these two

sources can generally deliver about 2 million acre feet of water to the Phoenix metro area

(an acre foot is about 325,000 gallons).

Even if climate change decreases that supply by 25 percent or more, the storage

systems serving the Sun Corridor hold several years’ worth of water and are designed to

smooth out a highly variable supply. More than half of the Sun Corridor’s water supply is

used for agriculture. In 2011, a Morrison Institute for Public Policy study, Watering the Sun

Corridor, concluded that even under negative climate assumptions, with moderately

increased conservation and a steady decline in agriculture, the Sun Corridor could add

several million people.8

Sustaining Phoenix requires a lot of water. As Table 1 shows, water usage in Phoenix

is the second-highest out of the nation’s 15 most populous metropolitan areas. This

placement should not be surprising: The region’s arid climate and hot summers lead to

higher average consumption, primarily because water is used to support landscaping.

Aridity is a challenge — but it is not a challenge like a hurricane. Hurricanes are

periodic catastrophic events that can be anticipated by a few days, or if forecasting

improves, a few weeks. They are events with potentially dire, immediate, sudden

consequences. While it is possible to take steps to mitigate the impact of catastrophes they

 

   

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occur quickly and often must be managed

after the fact by way of emergency response.

A drought, on the other hand, even in the

worst of circumstances, is a slowly unfolding,

largely incremental change to climate. Urban

Arizona’s vast and complex plumbing

systems are a precise example of man’s

capacity to manage resources against

challenge. Growth and the potential further

drying of the American Southwest will pose

new and incrementally greater challenges to

these systems. This has already happened,

and the result has been the replacement of

agricultural use with subdivisions, a steady

increase in water prices, and a dramatic

reduction in per capita water use.9

To sustain Phoenix, major policy

choices will need to be made over the next

several decades:

• Should any agriculture be

preserved in Central Arizona?

• Does future urban growth occur at higher densities, where less water is used per

capita?

• Can more water be reclaimed, and be put to more productive uses?

• Are there new sources of water to be developed and relocated for urban growth?

• Does more water need to be stored against times of extreme drought?

• Should the high water use for landscaping Metro Phoenix be eliminated?

Count II: It Takes Too Much Energy to Live Where It’s Hot

There is sometimes a tendency to view the question of sustainability as a kind of

extension of the Puritan ethic: We as a species have been bad and must atone by

TABLE 1

Source: USGS, 2005 (as reported in the Green City Index, 2011, The Economist Intelligence Unit)

 

 

   

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dramatically changing our lifestyle. This perspective views those who live in the desert as

especially bad.

But in a March 2013 Environmental Research Letters, Michael Sivak of the University of

Michigan Transportation Research Institute cites his study showing the favorable side of

cooling over heating in terms of energy consumption: “The results indicate that climate

control in Minneapolis is about 3.5 times as energy demanding as in Miami. This finding

suggests that, in the U.S., living in cold

climates is more energy demanding

than living in hot climates.”

Writing for Slate, Daniel

Engber in August 2012 analyzed the

American policy bias against air

conditioning. Federal subsidies long

have been far more plentiful for

heating than for cooling. A series of

critiques of the rise in air-conditioning

use seem to assume it is a negative,

even though the southward migration

has produced a net decline in energy

use for climate control.10

The reality is that by many

comparative measures, metropolitan

Phoenix is less impactful in its energy

consumption than many other

American cities. Arizona ranks 45th

out of 51 of the states and District of

Columbia in per capita energy

consumption, about 25 percent

below the U.S average. Phoenix is

similarly below the average.11 Table 2

and Table 3 show the metro area’s relative position.

TABLE 2

 

   

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Viewed in terms of carbon

footprint this energy consumption

statistic becomes even more

positive. Much of Phoenix’ electricity

is generated by nuclear power. And

while a fair amount is generated by

coal, those large coal-fired

generating stations do have

scrubbers making them less

polluting than the diesel oil that is

burned in basements to heat the

Midwest. Analysis done by the

Center for Climate Strategies

indicates that Arizona emits on

average 14 metric tons of CO2e

(carbon dioxide equivalent) per

person, while the U.S. average is

closer to 22 metric tons.12 The

difference is the result of warmer

temperature, the lack of heavy

industry, newer and more efficient

building stock, and a generally newer and more efficient fleet of automobiles. If solar energy

becomes a major component of Arizona’s generation, as it seems poised to do, this metric

will further improve. The single-family lifestyle of Arizona is particularly well-suited to the

dawning era of distributed generation, where the roof of a single-family home becomes a

power plant, and the electric vehicle in the garage acts as a storage device.

The carbon footprint of all American citizens needs to shrink dramatically. This is true

of Arizonans as well, but Arizona and metro Phoenix are actually ahead of most of the rest of

the country. If a consequence of climate change is to make Arizona even hotter, however,

more action will be required. It seems relatively clear that the most important policy change

to be made in a state with such abundant sunshine is the further development of the solar

resource. This is a place where Arizona’s example could lead the nation. Unfortunately,

TABLE 3

 

   

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however, as is often the case, Arizona public policy has meandered around in different

directions with regard to solar mandates and incentives. In January 2013, the Arizona

Corporation Commission – the state body that sets incentives for clean energy – canceled

solar incentives for privately developed solar projects and reduced incentives for residential

solar-panel installations by utility companies in the Phoenix and Tucson regions. For a region

that already suffers from a bad reputation when it comes to sustainability, these measures

create a climate of uncertainty regarding renewable energy.

While Arizona has a relatively positive energy profile, sustaining the region’s future

should be built on its greatest natural asset: sunshine. Consistent public policy is the most

important component for creating a sustainable energy future.

Count III: Cars – lots and lots of cars

When it comes to car usage, Phoenix is representative of the post-war, auto-centric

lifestyle created by cheap petroleum, but it is hardly unique. Only a few American cities are

built to allow their residents to eschew the automobile and live a lifestyle based on walking

and public transit. On this metric, such places do have a lower impact on the environment.

But most large American cities are every bit as auto dependent as Phoenix and the majority

rank worse for traffic jams and excess fuel consumption. The Texas Transportation Institute

ranked Phoenix 12th in terms of per-capita gallons of fuel consumed in commuting.13

Phoenix was 35th in hours of delay per commuter because its traffic moves at higher speeds.

Table 5 and Table 6 show these rankings.

Another respected source, INRIX, recently ranked Phoenix metro 39th on its scale for

overall traffic congestion – far lower than any larger metro area and better even than

smaller cities such as Honolulu, Seattle, Austin, Texas and Portland, Ore.14

Phoenix undeniably has an air-quality issue. Even if there were no cars, the

combination of dust, sunshine and farming would create challenges. U.S. EPA ranks

Maricopa County seventh in the number of unhealthy days for lung diseases behind Salt

Lake City, Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago and Houston. Not surprisingly, Los Angeles is way

out in front on this scale.

Phoenix was built on the auto. Today it has a rapidly evolving system of public

transportation, including a highly successful light-rail line. The city will move slowly away

 

   

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from the petroleum era — in step with the rest of the U.S. The transportation future of

Arizona requires two things:

• An increasing emphasis on public transportation

• A move away from petroleum-based personal mobility vehicles toward a fleet of

“cars” that will be smaller, lighter, more efficient and powered by electricity,

natural gas and other alternatives

Count IV: That Awful Sprawl is Bad, Bad, Bad William Whyte popularized the term “urban sprawl” in his 1958 book, The Exploding

Metropolis.15 The phrase has come to mean low-density, automobile-oriented, leapfrogging

development spread along streets and boulevards at the edge of urban areas, often

resulting in the redistribution of an older, denser, pedestrian-oriented city into suburban

patterns. Innumerable commentators see sprawl as one of the chief problems with modern

America, and often cite Phoenix as a prime culprit.16

The relentless criticism of Sunbelt cities as poster children for sprawl is also largely

inaccurate. The Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution has looked at

America’s newest

metropolitan places in its

study of “mountain megas.”

In analyzing the growth of

the “Sun Corridor,”

Brookings concludes that

Arizona’s megapolitan

region has grown relatively

densely and is one of the

most-efficient new urban

areas. The region converted

land to urban use at the

rate of .148 acres of rural

land for every new housing

unit between 1980 and

Table 4

 

   

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2000. In the lower 48 states the average conversion rate was more than 2.0 acres.17 This is

the result of the fact that most growth in the Phoenix metropolitan area takes place on the

immediate edge of the city rather than leapfrogging far out into rural areas and is built out at

relatively high densities on small single-family lots.

Phoenix is far from the least-dense major metro area, as shown in Table 4 from the

Center for Neighborhood Technology. The highest? Los Angeles, which many Americans see

as a synonym for sprawl.

Much of the criticism of Phoenix,

and indeed of most post-war America, as

too low on density and too sprawling is

really a criticism of the single-family home

lifestyle. Higher-density European cities

and American cities such as New York

and San Francisco do indeed have a

lower-carbon footprint. Density in Phoenix

increases almost every year but it is still

far from being the kind of pedestrian

environment that allows its citizens to live

a less-wasteful and environmentally

impactful lifestyle.

In trying to assess and analyze the

resilience and adaptability of urban form,

it is never a good idea to write off the

single-family home. Lifestyles in the

future will probably involve multi-

generational living and accommodation of

a wide variety of different family patterns.

Detached single-family homes are more adaptable to these changes than almost any other

residential form. Patios can be enclosed, garages can be converted and changes can be

made without displacing where people live or have made a substantial investment. The

investment that individuals and financial institutions make in a particular residential unit are

less dependent on the actions of other property owners than would be the case in higher-

TABLE 5

 

   

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density living. Single-family homes are the most scalable form of real estate development:

build one, see if it sells, and adapt or change the design and build another. One of the

mistakes that Phoenix developers made in the last real estate cycle was to anticipate a

dramatic increase in density and suddenly started building high-rise, high-density residential

living. That was too dramatic a shift, and the overbuilding of condominiums was a result of

the non-scalability of that mistake.

Cities change, grow and adapt in increments responding to changes in individual

choices. For a place such as Phoenix, built

on the single-family home model, there is a

huge variety of incremental change that will

happen going into the future. This range

gives a city such as Phoenix resilience and

adaptability to deal with changing demands

in the urban fabric.

To sustain and adapt its urban

fabric, Phoenix and the surrounding cities

should:

• Change development codes to

permit existing neighborhoods to

become incrementally more

dense

• Plan new development at

increasing densities, but still

primarily based on single-family

models, with an increasing mix of

patio/town home product

• Redevelop obsolete retail

projects for higher density

housing and smaller scale retail.

TABLE 6

 

   

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Count V: It’s Just One Big Ponzi Scheme There is a fatalistic view of the possibility that Phoenix will crumble back into the

desert landscape from which it came, as in Richard Florida’s March 2009 article: “How the

Crash will Reshape America.” Criticizing “cities in the sand,” Florida wrote:

“But in the heady days of the housing bubble, some Sun Belt cities — Phoenix and

Las Vegas are the best examples — developed economies centered largely on real estate and

construction. With sunny weather and plenty of flat, empty land, they got caught in a classic

boom cycle. Although these places drew tourists, retirees, and some industry — firms seeking

bigger footprints at lower costs — much of the cities’ development came from, well,

development itself.”18

Given the economic decline between 2005 and 2008, Florida’s criticism

clearly had resonance. Housing prices declined, job creation nearly ceased. But

housing sales and prices began to move upward in late 2011. By the first quarter of

2012, prices were increasing, at times, by 50 cents to $1 per square foot per day.

Home values overall rose about 25 percent from the trough. Job creation was slowly

gaining.19 The region is once again garnering headlines as a place where employers

are hiring, as recent employment figures indicate.

Metro Phoenix has long represented a boom and bust cycle. The city is often

accurately characterized as being a giant real estate development machine: a place

designed to attract people from colder climates by marketing sunshine, cheap houses, an

outdoor lifestyle, and a relatively low cost of doing business. Another Eastern observer,

Jonathan Laing, wrote a legendary article in 1988 chronicling the savings and loan

industry’s collapse after diversifying into real estate. His words then presaged Florida’s of 20

years later: “In the end, Phoenix is proving to be just as much of a one-industry town as

Houston or Denver. The industry isn’t oil, of course. It’s growth.”20 Laing was largely right.

But by 1993 the metro area had begun to build its way right back into boom times. That

catastrophic downturn had lasted about three years.

It is accurate to see Phoenix as a place driven by development. It is also fair to

criticize an over-reliance on construction and growth as leading to cyclical extremes of boom

and bust. But development is not a single industry like automobiles or steel that can be

ravaged by changing consumer patterns or global competition. Real estate is not portable —

 

   

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it is about accommodating demographic trends. An economy built on development is more

diversified than it may seem, because people moving to a place bring with them capital

investment, work effort, entrepreneurial zeal. As a result, the non-real estate side of the

Phoenix economy is remarkably diversified. According to a 2012 report by Arizona State

University’s L. William Seidman Research Institute, the regional economy is fairly diverse,

with several sectors including waste management, administrative support, finance and

insurance, hospitality and restaurants, and high-tech manufacturing sectors providing an

important source of employment and economic activity.21

The Urban Land Institute’s 2013 Emerging Trend in Real Estate uses Moody’s

Industrial Diversity Scale to rank America’s largest cities for the diversity of their economy.

The nation as a whole is assigned a value of 1.0. Phoenix scores a .79, placing it ahead of

Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Houston but behind Atlanta, Dallas,

and Chicago.

While Phoenix continues to build on its diverse economic base, it remains a relatively

low-wage economy since it’s based on construction, warehouse distribution, back office and

service industries. The average per-capita income in Phoenix is $36,833, which ranks 180th

out of America’s 370 largest cities. There is significant evidence that the United States is

sorting itself into cities based on high-wage, knowledge industries, and lower-wage service

and support economies. In The New Geography of Jobs, economist Enrico Moretti examines

the phenomenon of “winner” and “loser” cities in the knowledge economy. Metropolitan

Phoenix is a place that could go either way.

To begin moving away from an emphasis on growth as the economic driver of the

region, urban Arizona needs to consider public policy changes to:

• De-emphasize population growth as the basis for tax, land use, and economic

development policies;

• Consistently support education and innovation with long-term public policy.

WILL PHOENIX GO THE WAY OF THE HOHOKAM?

The Hohokam civilization represented a several-hundred-year-long adaptation to

desert life based on growing crops by draining water out of the Salt River through canals. At

the height of Hohokam civilization around 1000 A.D., the Hohokam population has been

estimated at about 40,000.22 The sophistication of their settlements included sports venues

 

   

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and even multi-story “condominiums” like the “Big House” at Casa Grande.23 Their society

sounds eerily familiar.

For generations, modern Arizonans wondered what became of the Hohokam, and

why they seemed to suddenly vanish from the archeological records after about 1450. In

2008 a team of archaeologists concluded that the population decline wasn’t nearly as

sudden as people often assumed — 75 percent of the population was lost over a 150-year

period. The pattern was one of “population aggregation.” Because of long-term drought

throughout the Southwest, migration from areas to the north brought larger populations into

central Arizona. As populations swelled, crop yields were stressed, social tensions between

newcomers and long-term residents arose and health declined. High-density population

clusters began to form around the best-irrigated areas, and maintenance of the canals

between those clusters suffered. The localized high-density areas likely became more

parochial, leading to increased competition for resources. Between climate changes,

resource challenges, social tension and too much in-migration, the area became less and

less attractive, and the Hohokam began to leave. Those who were left assimilated into

smaller, lower-density and less-distinctive cultures.

In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond catalogues the factors which can stress a

society to the point of extinction: 1) relationships with trading partners go awry; 2) the

society is eradicated by enemies; 3) global climate changes; 4) local resource depletion,

and, 5) how a place responds to the other four factors.24 The most critical factor is the last

one listed. Ultimately, the Hohokam apparently were unable to react — to adapt — to the

challenges they faced.

Cities do shrink as well as grow. Throughout history, once proud and flourishing

urban centers have reached points of economic obsolescence and have declined, often

precipitously, in population. Potosi, Tyre, Babylon, and Ur are legendary examples. Venice

and Dubrovnik are today largely museums of their past glory. Detroit is half its former size.25

St. Louis was once the greatest boomtown in America. The gateway to the West, St.

Louis saw the Mississippi River as the forever paramount avenue of commerce in the United

States. But it turned out railroads were more important than the river, and Chicago placed

its bet on railroads. In the 1890s, St. Louis was the fourth-largest city in America, with

450,000 people. By 1950, it had grown to more than 850,000. In 2007, it was the 52nd-

 

   

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largest city in America, with about 355,000 people. Today Mesa, Arizona, has nearly

100,000 more people than St. Louis.

Could Phoenix today be on the cusp of dramatic decline? Forty-thousand Hohokam

may have been pushing the carrying capacity of their infrastructure, especially their water

systems. At nearly 4 million, is Maricopa County (which includes Phoenix) getting close?

Watering the Sun Corridor concludes that the water supply can be stretched quite a bit

further, though tough choices will be required. The end of the petroleum era will add stress

to a place built around the automobile. A planet that gets even hotter will make the hottest

places less attractive.

The reality is, Metropolitan Phoenix exists in a kind of geography of insecurity.

Because the city is the youngest of American’s major metropolitan areas its identity is still

unclear. Because it is a city of transplants from a different geography, usually from a place

that rains a lot more, there tends to be a misunderstanding of how the city’s resources are

managed. Because the place has grown so quickly it is not implausible to imagine that it

might shrink just as quickly. But the real story of Phoenix is a tale of adaptation and the

power of collective action — government action — to confront the challenges of geography

and respond through public policy. Canals and dams were built, highways and airports

created connections, and a city was built in a place of geographic challenge.

The past challenges of dwelling in the desert proved manageable. In Arizona, extreme

variations in rainfall and extreme summer heat are a way of life. Climate change will

increase uncertainty and increase the magnitude of these familiar challenges. Phoenix will

likely get hotter, drier and dustier.

But in a place that has long dealt with extremes and a high degree of uncertainty, an

increase in the range and extent of that uncertainty can be met with the same kind of

creative management that has worked before. In this, metro Phoenix actually may be better

positioned to deal with the future than other places that relied on natural bounty and a

temperate climate, where climate change may portend dramatic changes. For locations just

above what has been a predictable sea level, any increase can be hugely significant and

may require massive responses such as the construction of sea walls or, eventually,

abandonment.

The potential ubiquity of the impact of climate change on Phoenix runs the “frog in

the boiling pot risk” – turn up the heat slowly, and the frog simply boils without ever thinking

 

   

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of escape. The threat to Phoenix' sustainability isn't hurricanes or tsunami, it’s complacency.

It is the expectation that abundant land and sunshine, along with portable water and cheap

housing and petroleum, will forever provide a winning formula. As the climate challenges

make a place built on climate less attractive, and as lifestyle and work patterns move

beyond the age of the automobile, it would be easy for a place like Phoenix to miss out.

Sustaining Phoenix will not require massive new infrastructure like levees or sea

walls. What it will require is confronting the future with the forthright candor that built the

city in the first place. Ultimately, sustainability isn’t about geography – it is about politics. It

is about a collective commitment to a place: a desire to stay.    

Political dysfunction is a legitimate threat to the future of not just to Phoenix but all

U.S. cities and the nation in general. It takes a belief in government and recognition for its

capacity to solve problems to sustain cities. A city is, after all, a gigantic public/private

partnership. Arizona politics are sometimes zany, but Phoenix was built by people who

understand government was not the problem but the solution. We need only to turn on the

water faucet to be reminded of that fact. Perhaps others should take note of that and other

facts when determining whether critics’ arguments against Phoenix’s sustainability truly hold

water.

•

 

   

19  

Endnotes

                                                                                                                         1  The  most  recent  and  longest  examination  of  Phoenix  appeared  in  2011  in  Andrew  Ross’  book  Bird  on  Fire:    Lessons  from  the  World’s  Least  Sustainable  City.  People  who  actually  read  Ross’  book  will  discover  a  lively  critique  of  the  local  politics  and  economy.  But  he  does  not  actually  try  to  prove  the  thesis  of  his  subtitle,  saying  simply:    “If  [Phoenix]  is  not  the  world’s  least  sustainable  city…it  is  a  very  close  contender,  and  in  any  event,  the  title  is  not  worth  arguing  over.”  Many  who  live  outside  Arizona  will  simply  hear  the  title  and  allow  it  to  reinforce  their  view  of  a  desert  metropolis  that  is  headed,  like  its  namesake,  back  to  the  ashes.  2  National  Weather  Service,  Preliminary  Monthly  Climate  Data  (CF6).  3  National  Weather  Service.  4  National  Weather  Service.    (www.wrh.noaa.gov)  5  Brookings  Report.  6  National  Public  Radio,  October  10,  2005  and  Winchester,  Simon,  A  Crack  in  the  Edge  of  the  World:  America  and  the  Great  California  Earthquake  of  1906,  2005.    7  www.sustainlane.com/us-­‐city-­‐rankings/.  8  In  late  2012,  the  U.S.  Bureau  of  Reclamation  issued  its  long  awaited  Colorado  River  Basin  Water  Supply  and  Demand  study.  This  complex  analysis  highlights  the  challenges  of  the  Colorado  Basin,  but  does  not  undermine  the  basic  conclusion  of  Watering  the  Sun  Corridor:    Phoenix  is  better  off  then  nearly  anywhere  else  in  the  arid  West.  9  In  the  last  10  years,  Phoenix  residents  have  curtailed  per-­‐capita  water  consumption  by  more  than  20  percent.  10  Slate  articles  11  Arizona:  State  Energy  Profiles,  U.S.  Energy  Information  Administration,  December  10,  2009.  12  The  Center  for  Climate  Strategies,  Final  Arizona  Greenhouse  Gas  Inventory  and  Reference  Case  Projections,  1990-­‐2020,  June  2005.  13  Texas  Traffic  Institute  study.  14  INRIX  study.  15  Whyte,  William  H.,  The  Exploding  Metropolis,  1958.    16  James  Howard  Kunstler,  Jon  Talton,  and  Delores  Hayden  have  written  extensively  about  sprawl  and  Phoenix.  17  Lang,  Robert  E.,  Andrea  Sarzynski,  and  Mark  Muro,  Mountain  Megas:  America’s  Newest  Metropolitan  Places  and  a  Federal  Partnership  to  Help  Them  Prosper,  July  2008.  18  Florida,  Richard,  “How  the  Crash  Will  Reshape  America,”  The  Atlantic,  March  2009.  19  Rudolf,  John  Collins,  “Construction  That  Fueled  Growth  in  the  Sun  Belt  Slows,”  New  York  Times,  August  28,  2009.  20  Laing,  Jonathan  R.,  “Phoenix  Descending:  Is  Boomtown  U.S.A.  Going  Bust?”  Barron’s,  December  18,  1988.  21  Hoffman  and  Rex,  The  Economic  Base  of  Arizona,  Metropolitan  Phoenix,  Metropolitan  Tucson,  the  Balance  of  the  State,  and  Chandler,  June  2012.  22  Clark,  Lyons,  Hill,  Nevzil  and  Doelle,  “Immigrants  and  Population  Collapse  in  the  Southern  Southwest,”  Archaeology  Southwest,  Fall  2008.  23  Sheridan,  Thomas,  Arizona,  A  History,  1995.  24  Diamond,  Jared,  Collapse:    How  Societies  Choose  to  Fail  or  Succeed,  2005.  25  Longworth,  Richard  C.,  Caught  in  the  Middle:  America’s  Heartland  in  the  Age  of  Globalism,  2008.       About the chief author/researcher Grady Gammage Jr., a senior research fellow at Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University, is a practicing lawyer, author, college instructor and former elected member and president of the Central Arizona Project Board of Directors. A lifelong resident of Phoenix, he is author of the book, Phoenix in Perspective.  April  2013  /  Morrison  Institute  for  Public  Policy  is  an  independent,  non-­‐partisan  public  policy  research  institute  examining  critical  Arizona  and  regional  issues,  and  is  a  catalyst  for  public  dialogue.  An  Arizona  State  University  resource,  Morrison  Institute  uses  research  results  and  communication  outreach  to  help  improve  the  quality  of  life  in  Arizona.  MorrisonInstitute.asu.edu